Matador

I've had the pleasure of viewing Pop Foul twice now, once at Woodstock and once at Sundance. It just keeps getting better every time. The cinematography, music, the writing and direction of actors are all superbly confident. Molson shows an ability to get consistently great performances from his actors, even child actors. It's one of those rare shorts that points to a larger world, that doesn't seem constrained by the format. I'm anxious to see what Molson can do in features, he definitely seems ready for it.

All in all, an important movie, told with an important voice.

10/10

If you rent one movie this year. . .by god, don't rent this horrible piece of crap. Not only does it run about an hour too long, but it's uninteresting, badly acted, and not scary. Let's hope Ed Norton can do a better job as lead in the remake. But seriously. . .Horrible.

Pushing Hands is Ang Lee's beautiful film about an elderly Chinese man transplanted into his son's American home. While most films about this subject, which for some reason critics like to call "East meets West", hyperbolize the struggles that immigrant Chinese must face, Pushing Hands tends to focus on minutia instead. For example, the elderly grandfather does not know that tin foil cannot be put into the microwave, which leads to a scolding by his caucasian daughter-in-law. All the conflict in the film is grounded in the real world, as opposed to some very abstract 'generational conflict'. Because of this I found this film to be much more rewarding than most other films about Asian-Americans. A must-see for Chinese-Americans and Caucasians alike. Personally, I'd like to watch it with my Chinese grandparents.

Listen for James Schamus's cameo as the voice on the answering machine at the beginning of the film.